The Murk Beneath

by L. D. Cunningham

  Crowley raised his eyebrows. I suspected it wasn’t the first time he’d heard the phrase used to describe Hognatt.

  I’d had my fill of Hognatt at that point. I decided that silence would be a good idea for a while. I needed to nurse my brain. The thing had been working overtime of late.

  A couple of hours passed. Justine began to nod off, then couldn’t hold off anymore and fell asleep, her head lolling to one side. I could see Crowley was going to hang on till the bitter end to avoid sleep.

  Another hour passed. It was already feeling like a long night and there were still nearly six hours to go until Hognatt’s phone call. Crowley’s head began to drop, then he jerked it back up again. This happened a couple more times until he did finally go to sleep.

  Where’s the harm? I’ll need to be sharp tomorrow. Maybe a bit of shuteye would do me good.

  I slumped in the chair to find comfort and closed my eyes.

  I woke to find Crowley struggling with his rope. His left arm was almost free.

  The gun. My gun! My arteries nearly popped. I relaxed. It was on the ground. How it never woke me when it fell, I will never know. I picked it up. There was a chip in a porcelain tile. The only chip in the kitchen. I felt like apologizing, but didn’t. I pointed the gun at Crowley.

  “Nice try. Now relax, Crowley.”

  I checked my watch. Just after three.

  “Where’s your phone?” I said.

  “It’s in my pocket.”

  “Burner?”

  “What do you think?”

  Of course it was.

  I took the phone out of Crowley’s pocket. I tightened his ropes, double-checked Justine’s. She woke when I disturbed her. She had a strange, distant look at first, then realized she was tied to a chair in her kitchen in the presence of a gunman and flailed for a few seconds before calming.

  “My apologies,” I said. “I don’t like being woken out of a deep sleep either.”

  I put the phone on the table.

  “When Hognatt rings, I’ll answer and put it to your ear. You’ll say whatever you would have had I not been here. I’ll listen in at close quarters. I won’t put the phone on speaker. He might notice and think there’s something funny about it. I’ll have the gun to your head in case you try anything. Just so you know in advance. So you don’t sound nervous.”

  As if that was going to make him less nervous. There was time to eat. I’d gotten used to eating at all hours when working for Solid Security. When I made Weetabix for the couple, they refused it. I ate mine, though.

  The time passed quickly. I assumed Hognatt would call bang on the top of the hour, so when it reached five minutes to, I started watching the second hand on my analogue display.

  At ten seconds to four by my watch, the phone rang. I went to the table and picked it up. I hit the green phone icon and put it to Crowley’s ear.

  “It’s me,” Crowley said.

  “I’ve just sent the coordinates to your phone,” I could clearly hear Hognatt say.

  The phone beeped to indicate a message had been received.

  “Got it,” Crowley said.

  “Five o’clock.”

  “Got it. Five o’clock sharp.”

  “OK. Five o’clock sharp. Should take you thirty minutes. See you then.”

  Hognatt hung up.

  Crowley looked up at me. I took the gun away from his temple.

  “Happy?”

  I didn’t think it was the right word. But I didn’t detect anything from Hognatt’s end. I believed we would have the element of surprise.

  I fiddled with the phone. I managed to find the message. There were GPS coordinates in decimal format. I showed them to Crowley.

  “Do I look like a sat nav to you?” he said. I felt like slapping him across the head.

  “Approximately,” I said.

  “East of here somewhere. Maybe twenty miles. I’ll have to enter the coordinates into the Garmin in the car to see exactly.”

  I was satisfied for now. We had about twenty minutes to spare. I looked in a ceramic jar that said tea.

  “What are these?” I asked. I was holding up a plain paper-wrapped stringed teabag.

  Crowley looked at Justine as if to say he wouldn’t be caught dead drinking the stuff. Justine answered.

  “Chasteberry.”

  I’d never heard of it. She must have spotted the look of ignorance.

  “It’s a herbal tea. You probably wouldn’t like it.”

  Crowley chipped in with his two cents: “Unless you are trying to get pregnant.”

  I quickly dropped it back in the jar. Like I was holding a bag of pubic hair.

  “Doesn’t anyone just drink tea anymore,” I said to no reply. But to each their own. In her world of tea drinking, I’m probably the equivalent of the Heineken drinker, her the equivalent of the Howling Gale drinker.

  I made do with water. We saw out the last quarter hour with all manner of fidgetiness. I was tapping the sole of my right foot on the ground. Crowley looked like he was grinding teeth. Justine was twitching her nose.

  At four-twenty I untied Crowley. I instructed him to use his rope to further tie up Justine.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to her. “We’ll be back before you know it. And don’t think about shouting.”

  I pressed the gun to Crowley’s back to emphasize my instruction.

  In the hall, I asked Crowley for his car keys, then asked him to brush his hair. Nothing out of the ordinary. Invite no suspicion from a distance.

  We went out to the car, a black Saab 9-3 with expensive-looking alloys. I kept the gun on Crowley through my jacket pocket. He got into the driver seat and I got into the passenger seat. Crowley entered the coordinates in the Garmin sat nav. The map centred on a location in Aghada, East Cork. I passed the keys to him.

  “Drive,” I said. “And no –”

  “Funny business. I know. Look, man, we want to start a family.”

  Don’t we all. He was trying to personalize himself, make it difficult for me to put him in harm’s way. If he actually had a kid, it might have worked. But my resolve was unbreakable. I wanted to get to Hognatt.

  “I’m just a foot soldier,” he said. “I’m of no consequence to you.”

  “Just shut up and drive,” I said. “Hognatt’s waiting.”

  Crowley turned the key. The engine started. He reversed out of the parking space and began the journey to Aghada.

  12

  The Puppet Master

  I asked Crowley to tune the radio to Lyric FM. I wasn’t impressed that it wasn’t one of his presets. Jazz was playing. I’m OK with Jazz. I’d take classical over it, though. Beethoven, Haydn, maybe.

  After twenty minutes we reached the Lake View roundabout, which I always thought of as the Midleton roundabout. Crowley took the last exit for Whitegate and Ballycotton.

  We passed a relatively new estate called Maple Wood. Maples were Canadian. What was wrong with good old Irish Sycamore? Another hangover from the Celtic Tiger – stupid names for housing estates. Names that just made you want to club the property developer who dreamed up the name over the head.

  A few minutes later and we were driving through Rostellan, a beautiful village that looks like a picture-perfect entry for the tidy towns competition. To the right was a lake, which was really a piece of the inner harbour that had been dammed by a road to the woods on the other side. Swans spent the comparatively mild winters there and I could see a couple nuzzling on the water.

  When we were a couple of minutes’ drive away from the meeting point on the far side of Aghada, I asked Crowley to turn onto a lane. At the entrance to a farm, I told him to pull in. It was six minutes to the hour.

  “We’ll walk from here across the fields,” I said.

  It hadn’t rained, but the ground underfoot was still soft. I supposed the water table was low here with it being so close to the inner harbour. Crowley walked in front and I held the gun down by my side.

  “We’ll wait unt
il your pals are all there. Then I’ll walk you in with the gun to your head. Let’s hope for your sake that Hognatt values your life.”

  “For your sake too,” Crowley replied.

  He had a point. Just like the poker game, this was all in or all out. Who knows how much Africa had warped Hognatt’s mind. He brandished a machete like it was just a toothpick, so God knows what he’d be like with an MP7 in his hands.

  We came to a ditch and climbed over. There was another field between us and the farm where Hognatt wanted to meet. I had a close look at the hedge beyond. We were hidden from view.

  “This is crazy,” Crowley said. “It’s not too late to turn back.”

  “Just keep your beak shut,” I said. “Before I shoot it off.”

  There was a gate in the hedge – not one a tractor could fit through, just a man and his dog, maybe. We sidled along the hedge until we reached it. I peeked around the hedge corner. The main yard had two cars. One was an old Ford Cortina that was in good repair. The other was a Honda Civic hatchback. I asked Crowley to take a look.

  “Any of those Hognatt’s?” I asked.

  “No. I wouldn’t know what he might turn up in, but those belong to the other team members.”

  Team members made them sound like office workers.

  “Then we wait,” I said.

  I had another look. To the far side of the courtyard there was a stable where I could see one man smoking, the other chewing gum. They looked relaxed.

  Another couple of minutes passed and I became more nervous.

  “Does he turn up late? He doesn’t seem the type that would.”

  “Ah, he might. Now and again.”

  Crowley seemed evasive. For the umpteenth time I held the gun up, pointing it at his upper chest.

  “Look, man, he’ll arrive in his own time.”

  “He better, because –”

  The world went dark. I felt something knock the back of my legs and I fell to my knees.

  “Drop it,” a voice said and I could feel something hard against my skull.

  I did consider shooting Crowley. Somehow, and I didn’t know how exactly, he had betrayed me. Hognatt was waiting. I’d been bagged. The chord had been tightened around my neck, nearly choking me to unconsciousness. I dropped the gun.

  “I warned you,” Crowley said and I felt a punch to my left kidney.

  I could feel two men drag me by my armpits. The tops of my toes trailed behind me.

  I was hogtied.

  I was lifted off my feet.

  Not a word was spoken.

  I landed on something hard, metal probably. I heard an echo. A door closed behind me.

  “I’ll call tonight,” I heard Hognatt say from outside whatever I was in.

  Another door closed. There was shaking, then considerable bumping. I was in the back of a jeep or a van. And I was being driven away to only God knew where.

  I was alive. I could have been shot and dumped on that farm. I might have been found in some rusting tank, much like my father in that car boot. Could be that I’d never have been found.

  We drove for what felt like twenty minutes. We only took a couple of turns. Then a final turn and the ground underneath was bumpy. Not gravel or rocks. Rough like driving through tractor tyre tracks.

  The vehicle – car, van, truck, I couldn’t say – finally came to a stop.

  A door behind me opened. I could hear the hinges squeak.

  Someone, something caught my feet and dragged me. I fell sideways onto the ground. My head hit the dirt with a thud. I was dazed and the bag over my head disoriented me entirely.

  “Get up,” Hognatt said. My arms and legs straightened out when Hognatt cut the hogtie. My hands were still tied together, but my legs were free.

  I had difficulty getting up. The backs of my knees ached from Hognatt’s heel-kick.

  I had naively gone to get Hognatt, done considerable legwork, taken serious risks. All for nought.

  Hognatt twisted my body like a top to face in a particular direction.

  “Walk,” he said and I felt something hard in my back. The distance he spoke from suggested that he was holding a shotgun, rifle, something with a lengthy barrel to my back.

  I stumbled over a rut in the ground. Then I fell over a piece of wood or something.

  “Get up you fat cunt!”

  I struggled to my feet again and Hognatt gave me a shove forward.

  “Mind your feet here,” Hognatt said.

  I took baby steps and found myself against a step. I carefully raised a foot to step up. Then another step and another.

  Hognatt came to my side and I heard a door open.

  “Go on,” he said.

  I walked a few more steps.

  “Sit.”

  I had to take it on faith that a chair would break my fall. It did. The funny bones in my arms stung when they hit the wooden arms of the chair.

  Hognatt loosened the drawstring and pulled the hood from my head. The light blinded me for a moment and my eyes watered.

  A man was sitting opposite. A tall man, his arms high on a similar chair.

  “Michael, Michael. It seems I have underestimated you.”

  I knew at once who it was.

  It was Jordan.

  We were in the house past Killeagh where we’d met before when Goulding was present.

  Hognatt handed something to him. It was my gun. Jordan turned it over in his hands, examined it from all angles. He ejected the clip, counted the bullets and inserted the clip again.

  “Such a crude weapon, Michael.”

  He handed it back to Hognatt.

  “Nine-mil Walther,” Jordan said. “A little pop-pop gun. Look at what my friend here is carrying.”

  Hognatt stood next to him with what I knew was an MP7. It was resting in his arms like a baby, the nozzle pointed diagonally to the ceiling, a scope on the top for mid-distance aiming.

  “I’d see you as a P90 man, myself,” Jordan said. “More up close and personal, but all the lethality of the MP7.”

  I don’t know if Jordan was trying to impress me with his firearms knowledge, but it was wearing thin on me. The pain rose from my knees until it surged into my chest and became an outburst.

  “I might have known you weren’t retired,” I said. “Fucking puppet master pulling all the strings. Robberies, the threat of murder, actual murder if I can assume Moolah was your handy work.”

  “Wait –” Jordan began.

  “And to think I bought into your crap hook, line and sinker. Teaching MMA to disadvantaged kids. I mean, for fuck’s sake what a brass neck.”

  “Wait, Michael. It’s not how it seems. You’re such a surface man. You don’t look beneath. I’m much more nuanced than you give me credit for.”

  I stood out of the chair. Hognatt aimed the MP7 at me. I sat down again.

  “I had nothing to do with Fitzmaurice’s murder,” Jordan said. “The rest … well, there is truth in it, I’ll grant you. But for very different reasons than you might expect. Very different reasons.”

  He waved Hognatt away. Hognatt looked at him with a double-checking expression. Jordan confirmed his wave.

  “Hognatt here is going to take a stroll around the garden. And I’m going to ask for your trust. If I was up to all you say I am up to, do you think you would still be alive?”

  I blanked him. He was right, though.

  Hognatt closed the door behind him. I had an opportunity to get up and take Jordan out. But Jordan got up first. He walked over to me.

  “Hognatt can be a bit heavy handed.”

  He untied the rope around my hands. I grabbed his wrist tightly. Jordan looked at me with not an ounce of concern.

  “Trust me, Michael. Trust me.”

  I let go of his wrist. Jordan returned to his seat.

  “Let me begin,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll begin.” I sat upright to show I meant business. “What the fuck happened in Churchfield? Did you sanction that and the
knock to my head?”

  Jordan put a hand to his chin and rubbed it.

  “Yes and yes. Not to do you any harm, though I’m sure some was. The television sets were just vessels for drugs. Meth, to be precise. About half a million street value, I would estimate. I knew O’Brien was up to no good. So I took his televisions. I took his drugs. I wanted to stir things up to see what his movements would be after that.”

  “Hang on,” I said, then stopped. I considered his admission that I was to be banged on the head. I thought about Cotter’s suspicions about the link between Jordan, Solid Security and Druid. A triangle that I seemed to be the centre of.

  “You own Solid Security?” I continued.

  Jordan chuckled a little. “In a roundabout way.”

  “And Druid.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you request me for the Druid assignment?”

  “Yes.”

  There it was. Not even an attempt to evade the question.

  “Did you even have something to do with me being hired by Solid?”

  “Yes.”

  “So this headhunting, the HR guy that asked would I be interested what with me being an ex-Guard and all that – that was your doing?”

  “Yes. Of course. Of course.”

  He said it like I was supposed to applaud. But he’d dragged me into this whole mess much like Hognatt and Crowley had dragged me on my heels like a slaughtered pig.

  “You’re not just the puppet master,” I said. “You’re the fucking guy who pulls the strings on the puppet master.”

  Jordan laughed a loud, long laugh.

  “Ah, Michael. I see you are back on form. Good man. Good man.”

  I didn’t join his laughter. I thought it was obscene.

  Hognatt prised opened the door, peered in and closed it again.

  “I get a bang on the head. I get all riled up ready for vengeance. You send O'Keeffe to kidnap me. You set it up so I couldn’t say no to your offer.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, Michael. You got me.”

  He held his hands above his head in symbolic surrender.

  “But … but why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why me? Why go to all that trouble for a washed-up Guard like myself. You said it yourself. I was damaged goods.”